What If?: We Were All Professional Musicians!

Every day in Humanities class, we collectively listen to a piece of music. The genre varies completely from one another, and its usually from artists that we would never listen to on our own. After we listen to a particular piece, we usually take 10-15 minutes going over what we feel and think about as we hear the music being played. Some of us raise our hands and tell the class what we think the music is trying to convey as best as we can. Our responses are obviously not thought out with a professional musical mind as none of us has intensely studied music theory and the history of music, or at least I think no one has. I believe that our class can be split up into three different groups: people that hardly ever listen to music, people that listen to music on the radio for enjoyment but don't actually play an instrument, and people who both listen to music for "inspiration" and the like and attempt to or actually play instruments.

Experience wise, the people who listen to music for "inspiration" and play instruments probably have the most trained musical ear just because they have willingly surrounded themselves with that environment. They are most able to formulate thoughts about a particular piece that sound interesting and unique. Yes, the other two groups of kids do have the ability to think about music too, but the probability of thinking creatively whilst hearing a new piece of music is higher for the people who actively listen to music and apply their knowledge to an instrument.

Even so, none of us still have ever had professional musical instruction in which we attend a college of music, which is what I would like to now get to.

What if we were all professional musicians that just graduated from college with a degree in music. What if all of us had years and years of experience in both playing an instrument and actively listening to the millions of historical pieces of music literature. What if we had gathered experience writing essays and reports about a piece of music that our teacher had assigned us. What if music was the main focus of each of our lives, and we had already decided to make it our careers. Imagine how much our musical debates in Humanities class would change.

We would probably go on for HOURS about what a musical piece is trying to convey. It would hugely surpass our 10-15 minutes of going over what a piece means to us. It would also never have awkward silences when no one can think of something to say or when no one even wants to try. It would never have times in which one person says one thing and the rest of the people sometimes just repeat what the first person said in a different way. There would be the most out of this world theories as to why the music was created. We would hardly ever give up our argument, and we would effectively back it up with actual music theory rules, like crescendos and decrescendos and scherzandos and dynamics and articulations and repeats and allegrettos and a whole lot of other musical terms that I have never heard about and probably never will!

I would love to be part of a debate in which all of the people involved had different educations and experiences in music, utilizing both of them to actively discuss a piece of literature that they were hearing. They would most likely have heard almost every piece that we have heard and are going to hear in Humanities class anyways. It would be really fun watching and listening to what a group of 15-20 professional musicans can think of. It would be exciting trying to grasp what goes on in the brains of people that dedicate their lives to music as they hear pieces that they had never heard before. That is the epitome of a Humanities class.

Best of Week: "Love Supreme" - Johnny Coltrane

The first song I heard in this class was Love Supreme by the jazz musician Johnny Coltrane. This piece of literature playing on the speakers surprised me because I thought I was walking into an English class, not a Music class. However, I quickly learned that I as I selected Humanities as my first choice for English my Senior year, I was getting myself into a class that attempted to tap into my human condition. It's first attempt was to coax some kind of emotion out of me as I was exposed to the reptitious tunes of Johnny Coltrane.

The result of the class analyzation of this piece was what encouraged me to select it as the "best of week" for this blog. I enjoyed hearing the opinions and thoughts of the people sitting around me. I was bemused by how people were feeling as they were thrusted into such a situation like mine. I, as many of my other classmates, did not expect to start 3rd period English with some jazz music. It was a change, and I very much liked it. The analyzation of the first movement of this piece if you will led me to believe that Coltrane was trying to invoke some type of human love inside of the listener. I believed that this music was created to make the listener acknowledge what he/she loves most, even if it is a secret. I thought the melody of the saxophone was pieced together to let out the emotion of love, especially the type that people rarely talk about. However vague this may sound like, it should make sense to the reader with some thought. Listening to this song and really trying to let its notes take advantage of you will allow you to realize the things in life that are most important.

Surprisingly, at the end of the class analyzation, Mr. Glass told the class that Coltrane wrote this song as a tribute to his God. He said that Coltrane wanted to write about his unconditional love for whoever he worships. I was hugely surprised because I never would associate these lyrics with religion. Perhaps I think differently because I have different views of divinity. Nevertheless, it is good to understand how music appeals to different listeners, even if the creator himself of the supposed song thinks of it differently than the listener.

No, I will not change my interpretation of Love Supreme because I have learned why Coltrane wrote it. I will continue to think of this piece as the realization of that which is most loved in life, whether it be a thing, a place, a person, or in the case of Johnny Coltrane, God.